Yeah, i'd like them to re-visit the more realistic/gritty art style, altrough i'd like them to try a new art style as well.
Something like Mystery Dungeon DX could be interesting, but might be too alienating?:
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Something stylized like PMD would be great. Photorealism never interested me, still doesn't. I don't need Smash to completely redo the animation style and framerate and all that, like with Guilty Gear or Hi-Fi Rush, but in general stylized, painted/cel-shaded graphics have kinda become a big thing nowadays. Think it started with Into the Spider-Verse; Regardless of orgins, it's in the vogue now and I wouldn't be surprised if Smash 6 leaned into that. Maybe not exactly like PMD's watercolor style, but at least
some sort of stylization
I understand and agree with your point, but I do think GTA VI probably isn't a great example, it's a unique cirumstance. Like, GTA VI is probably going to become the most successful media release in human history lol.
I will say though, this is loosely related, but I do think the whole "Ultimate became too much about hype, nobody cared about the actual game anymore" sentiment I see sometimes is kind of just dressing up "it didn't add the characters im interested in" in a bit of a sanctimonious way. I think there is something to be said about how that game's hype cycle turned out and a lot of the toxicity that came in and such, and how the marketing leaned into that, but I feel like it's also very easy for that to become a "i'm a true fan vs those fake hypeseeker things" and assume bad faith in every case without really talking about the topic with more nuance. I'm being a bit sanctimonious myself here, but I think in general it's not hard to get lost in the sauce when you spend so much time on hardcore internet communities like this.
The way I see it, it's less that nobody cared about the game and more that the game itself became centralized more around the big reveals, at least during the DLC period. In the base game, there was a lot of hype for World of Light as finally giving us a story mode again, but for the DLC it's just a line of fighters and their supplementary content, like stages or Spirits. Since it's DLC, they'd obviously try to get people incentivized to buy it, so they slam us with popular but unexpected characters like Joker or super big requests like Banjo, opening up far more possibilities for third-parties than there was before. And since we knew there were limited slots each Fighter's Pass, speculation became a lot more competitive because each new fighter is one less chance for your most wanteds.
Really, I think it's just the natural course of the DLC, since there's only so much extra you could add with the skeleton crew, and if the game itself prioritizes fighters over all else that's going to be the main focus. And I myself was always there for that seasonal hype surge, so I can't criticize that "hype culture" (for lack of a better word) without being just a bit hypocritical. But it
did feel rather overcompetitive, and while this is largely personal preference, I feel it lost that unique status as a time capsule of the era, the way past Smash games were. I'm fine if Smash 6 cools off a bit and returns to the usual Smash formula, at least for the base game.
Exists too.